[OSM-talk] Undo request button for changesets

[Ulf Lamping]

Shaun McDonald schrieb:
> 
> On 14 Jul 2009, at 09:50, Ulf Lamping wrote:
> 
>> Tom Hughes schrieb:
>>
>>> because in general terms it won't work - reverting
>>> will often need manual intervention to resolve conflicts.
>>
>> I've heard this argument many times before, but no prove that it is
>> actually true. Why not do it the osm way, implement it the simplest
>> possible way and see how far we get?
> 
> People who have reverted stuff in the past have already come across the 
> conflicts. This is especially true when you have someone who has tried 
> to fix the problem manually before asking for help.

True.

But: IMHO we would probably have a lot less of those manual fixes, when 
there would be an easier way to "repair stuff" like a revert button.

A normal mapper currently simply don't have a lot of other options to 
repair stuff than to try to do it manually :-)

> As soon as someone has edited anything in the changeset after the 
> version in the changeset, then you have a conflict and can't do a simple 
> one click revert. OpenStreetMap data is a *lot* more complex than the 
> Wikipedia when it comes to reverting due to the referential integrity. 
> That is key to there not being a simple revert system for whole changesets.

Yes, I'm aware of that. However, the question is how often will this 
actually happen if someone wants to revert stuff - IMO this is only 
rarely the case for the time period where a revert is really interesting.

>> If the edit can't be reverted because of conflicts, simply show a:
>> "can't revert because of editing conflicts" message.
>>
>> I guess this would already solve 99.99% of all cases.
> 
> Only in the seconds/hours after the edit was made (depending on how 
> active the mappers in the area are). The further back in time you go the 
> more conflicts you get and the harder it is.

Yes, the revert will probably only be possible in the few hours / days 
after the changeset was done.

I don't expect a changeset done three months ago to be actually 
revertable - probably a good thing in that case ;-)

Regards, ULFL